What did the State of Emergency Mean?
Sterilization Programme
Martial Law
Indira Gandhi
&
The Emergency
- One of the legacies that remained from this period is the enforced government sterilization programme introduced
- Enforced by her son Sanjay and the Youth Congress
- Illegal Slum clearance made 1000s homeless
First time India hadn't been a democracy since it's independence
- Turned India into a dictatorship
- Restriction of civil rights
- Political opponents thrown in jail
- Curbed freedom of speech
Parents
To legitimise her actions Indira Gandhi called a vote in the Lok Sabha for all members not imprisoned
Early Life
It meant that India had joined the pattern of other third world countries that no longer viewed democracy as a viable option after the economic crisis
Mother, Kamala Nehru, died of Tuberculosis when Indira was young
Father, Jawaharlal Nehru, top politician who succeeded in gaining independence for India .
First PM of free India
“Her political and Personal lives were intertwined from the start”
Starting the Emergency
Education
Had a progressive education in numerous places...
Further Unrest
Chief of Staff in Father's Administration
1947-1964
Corruption
Economic Downturn
Allahabad Conviction
In This Presentation
Born 19 November 1917
- Brief look at her early life and path into politics
- Main focus on "The Emergency" between 1975-1977
- Conclusions and discussion questions
- Protests erupted outside of parliament
- Calls for her to stand down
- Fighting in the Darjeeling district
- 1973 OPEC restricted the supply of oil and quadrupled the price
- Massive blow to India's economy
- Businesses and corporations began to fund the opposition parties
- Congress had to resort to increasingly corrupt ways to raise funds
- Gandhi accused of election fraud and an investigation was carried out
- Court ruled that her election was null and void
- Removed her seat from Lok Sabha
- The Supreme Court ruled that she remain de-barred from voting, privileges as MP revoked
- BUT could continue as Prime Minister
Marriage and Family
Personal Assistant to Her father 1941-64
Married Feroze Gandhi in 1942
Political Unrest
State of Emergency
1973-1975 both inside and outside of parliament, towards Gandi's Government
- Gandhi knew that any short term attempts to combat the economy would be pointless
- Saw the opposition as illegeitmate
- Gandhi called on the compliant president to call a State of Emergency
End Of The Emergency
Rise to Power
- Result was a crushing defeat
- Congress won 154 of 542 seats
- January 1977 announced elections for the upcoming March
- Political Opposition members only just released from prison
- Mass abandonment of support for the congress party
- India in political turmoil again
- Kamraj and his faction rally behind Indira for the premiership
- Belief that she would be easy to manipulate
- Pakistan declares war on India.
- US embargo on arms to both countries.
- Normalisation of Relations agreement signed.
- Almost immediately afterwards Shastri dies of a heart attack (suspicions he was poisoned)
- Nehru died 1964
- Kamraj, a close friend of Nehru wanted a PM that he could influence
- Lal Bahadur Shastri chosen for the Premiership
- Remains conflicting ideas and theories as to why Gandhi decided to go back to a voting system in 1977
- Some think that she believed her own propaganda that she could still have popular support
- Others suggest that the army applied pressure for her to return to a democracy
"Indira Gandhi came to power because she appeared to have a set of paradoxical political qualifications, most significantly, of indistinctness and ambiguity"
Early Political Stages
1967 Election: share of the votes dropped to 40% for the Congress Party
GREEN REVOLUTION
True benefits of the Green revolution weren't properly experienced until the 1970s
- Switched priorities from investment in heavy industry to investment in agriculture
- Government distributed free fertiliser, insecticides and high-yielding varieties of food grain to peasant farmers
- More money spent on irrigation
- Still a lot of anxiety over the economy
- Resentment over American involvement
- Resentment over need for foreign support
- Dispute developed between Sikh and Hindi speakers in Punjab
- However the Green revolution only really benefited the farmers that were already wealthy, namely in the Punjab and surrounding areas
- As a result the prosperous farmers became a powerful political lobby
Conclusions & Questions
- Personally think that Indira was doing what she believed to be best for the country
- Unclear how India would have turned out if remained a democracy during the lowest point in it's economy
Discussion Questions
Was Indira doing what she believed to be best for the country, or was it a desperate move to remain in power?
"Named "Woman of the Millennium" in a poll organised by the BBC in 1999"
Does she deserve this title?
Was she more extreme in her actions to prove herself relevant as a woman ?